


the thing you become

by theformerone



Series: shikasaku week 2019 [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, F/M, Functionally Immortal Sakura, Jashinist Shikamaru, Post-Fourth Shinobi War, dark au, shikasakuweek 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 12:32:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: Shikamaru does not remember time. He remembers blood.





	the thing you become

**Author's Note:**

> @mako - i'm four days late, but did u miss me?  
> four day 4's prompt, ashamed of the thing you become

She stands at the summoning circle, one foot in, the other foot out, her blood not spilled, and therefore she is safe. Her hands hold the man by the neck; he lays over her lap, docile and immobile as an infant. She even hums to him, a little bit. A song Shikamaru remembers from when the world was still the world. 

Shikamaru is ready, his head resting on the top tooth of Hidan's scythe. The middle one had been lost when Shikamaru tried to dig it up in those early days. Any discarded weapon was a good one. The whole of the earth was teeming with White Zetsus to do Kaguya's bidding, rooting out coves of nature chakra hiding in human beings and sacred places. 

They kill people. They always have. That shouldn't be what sticks in Shikamaru's craw. Somehow, it does anyway. 

They try to follow a code. It's as close as they can get to a nindo these days. There were humans that collaborated with White Zetsus, hoping to get better treatment in the Infinite Tsukuyomi for their deeds. The White Zetsu didn't tell them they would have gotten their hearts desires anyway. They'd be fools to turn away volunteer spies that would turn into volunteer food for their mother.

Still. They have been doing this for an awful long time. Years, it must have been by now. Decades more like. And here they are, still looking as vibrant and daisy fresh as they did the day their world was plunged into nothing. 

Shikamaru does not remember time. He remembers blood. And Sakura. 

She steals this man's chakra from his body, though there isn't much for her to gather from him. The samurai were hard to find, and so were the spiritually enlightened. Disciplined civilians and non-combatants were always the more likely to have under-developed chakra pathways, but plenty of chakra itself. 

He waits for the moment when her eyes flash up to him, when the seal on her forehead will flicker from black to purple again. When she does, he drags his throat down the blade of Hidan's scythe — beheads himself. 

Shikamaru catches his head by the ponytail before it hits the ground. Sakura lifts an eyebrow at the display. 

"You're getting lazy."

Shikamaru rolls his eyes, and breaks the summoning circle. The sound of distant horses, the roar of battle that always vibrates in the back of his brain calms. Jashin was a strange and old god who spoke in whispers, but with this sacrifice, he would be sated. 

"You're getting tired," he replies, carefully attaching his head to his neck. He's done it so many times it's like second nature, but that's mostly because he knows if he put his head on wrong, Sakura would never help him set it back right. She'd be too busy laughing at him for the next seventy-six years. 

"It's not easy being this beautiful," Sakura huffs, and rises to her feet. 

Shikamaru knows for a fact that it isn't. The trick to Tsunade's everlasting youth could only be taken steps forward by an apprentice that needed to survive so she could set the world to rights when she knew how to do it. Stealing an entire tenketsu system's worth of chakra from a person in one pull could fuel the body rather than Sakura's own chakra. 

Shikamaru made a deal with a demon so he could help her. There were worse bargains to make. He's in his nineties now, but he thinks they're close to a breakthrough.

"You need a rest," he says, deflecting. 

Sakura narrows her eyes at him, and walks briskly past him. She spares no glance at the corpse beside her. The man had been reasonably young, close to his forties. He was proof that somewhere, out there, Kaguya's influence still had not proved itself as perfect as she claimed it was. 

Still. Shikamaru crouches down gently beside the corpse, breaking the circle as he does. He sets the man's head on his body, and covers it with a palmful of earth. 

This man was proof that life was capable of enduring even in this world. His real, young life, and not the artificial ones of Sakura and Shikamaru. But he was untrained. Untested in battle against enemies that used better tactics than the brute force of a White Zetsu horde. 

If Sakura and Shikamaru were going to kill the Rabbit Goddess forever, he needed to be smarter than that. And so did the people that raised him.

Sakura and Shikamaru had been searching for survivors for years. The bands of refugees seemed to evade the two of them as well as they evaded Kaguya. 

"We don't have time for shame, Shikamaru," she says, the permanent white lines of her Byakugo making her seem all the more ghostly. "He was a traitor to all survivors." 

Shikamaru scratches the back of his head, and with an absentminded thumb, traces the place where countless decapitation scars ought to circle his neck. He doesn't mind the lack of gnarled skin. 

"I know."

Then she's beside him, step soft and quiet, the backs of her knuckles brushing against his, asking for permission. Shikamaru takes her hand. 

"This means we're close," she says. 

"I know."

Sakura presses her lips to the space just beneath his jaw, and from this close, Shikamaru can feel the force of the life she's just stolen from this man. He wonders if she can feel the way the cloud of his death hangs around Shikamaru's face, like a veil of fresh cigarette smoke. Life and death, the both of them. 


End file.
